Sorry for the delay in posting, apparently Vietnam blocked WordPress so I had to wait until we got to Cambodia to publish my latest posts!

We have found that we seem to enjoy the smaller towns in Vietnam that are not overrun with tourists. The ones where there are not many people who speak English, where we have to use charades and pointing to convey what we need, where we don’t get overcharged for street food just for being white. Dong Hoi was one of those places.

Dong Hoi is along the train line, close to the eastern coast of Vietnam, and about an hour and a half by motorbike from Phong Nha National Park. It is not that small, but it seems that the people who work in town do not actually live in Dong Hoi, as it gets really quiet after around 6pm. We arrived on the train (another late train, though this one was actually reasonably comfortable) from Hue, and got settled into our next hotel room, an $11/night room that was surprisingly decent. My stomach had been bothering me and not eating a real lunch (due to the late train/no decent food at the train station besides our staples of Oreos and Pringles) plus the bumpy train ride did not really make it feel better. Luckily we found a cozy cafe to eat at for dinner, that must have been run by a western person because it really felt homey to us. We had a delicious pumpkin soup with some mango in it (really need to try making something like this. It was a creamy pumpkin soup, I think with some ginger, and a handful of chopped ripe mango in the middle), spring rolls, French fries, and rice with chicken and veggies, along with some fancy mixed drinks. We felt a lot better after eating (go figure).

The next morning we got up early, ate breakfast, and rented an automatic motorbike from the hotel to head out to the Phong Nha National Park. This park is known for its numerous caves that are found in limestone “karst formations”, which are limestone hills that seem to pop out from flat ground. The area played a significant role in the Vietnam War, as the Viet Cong used this area to store ammunition and shuttle it down towards the south along the Ho Chi Minh highway. They would use makeshift bridges to shuttle cars across the small rivers overnight, and take them away and hide them in the caves during the day. The jungles of the area also helped them hide and make the area more impenetrable. As a result, it was heavily bombed by the US during the war.

We got a little lost on the way out of town, but once we actually consulted the gps on our phones we got along in the right direction fairly quickly. The ride out there through the countryside was incredibly scenic, and a nice way to see people going about their daily lives. 

   
    
    
 When we arrived at the park, we felt like we had been driving for hours and that it was lunchtime, but it was actually only 10:30. So we had second breakfast. Then we drove around trying to find the caves with our crappy maps and roads not marked on our offline maps.

We got close to the Phong Nha cave on our first attempt, but some travelers driving toward us told us the road ended at a dead end and they were going to try to get a boat that goes into the cave on the river that flows through it. We were having fun driving around so we decided to just find the walk-in entrance or another cave instead.

   
 We drove for awhile through the national park.

   
    
 
After getting confused, asking for directions, and driving maybe 35km, we finally found the Paradise Cave. This cave was recently discovered and opened to the pubic in 2005; there was a lot of rubble at the entrance so we imagined that maybe the bombing during the war closed up the entrance. Or maybe it was just never discovered until 2005, the entrance was quite a ways up a hill and not in an area where I would imagine local people would spend a lot of time. Not sure what the truth is on that one. We paid the fairly expensive fee (by Vietnam standards, about $11 each) and walked probably two miles to and then up the hillside leading to the cave entrance. 

Lots of stairs to get into the cave.

   
It was huge!

     

    
    
 
Taking pictures of us with cave formations in not very bright caves is kind of hard. These are our best attempts. We probably could have gotten better pics if we would have just jumped off the boardwalk and gotten into the spotlight close to the formations like the Vietnamese tourists, but there were signs everywhere telling people not to do exactly that, so us rule followers had to settle for crappier pics. 

  

 
I took a video too but I can’t seem to figure out how to get it on the blog just yet. When I do, I will put it here.

After spending some time in Paradise cave and climbing back out and down the path back to the motorbike, it was around 2:30. Many of the other caves close at around 4:30, and we were about 25km from the next cave, and we didn’t know exactly where it was – we decided to give it a try, and if we didn’t make it, at least we got to drive through a different part of the park on the way there. The other cave, Phong Nha, was apparently close to the highway back to Dong Hoi anyways. 

   
 We passed the entrance to the Dark Cave, but didn’t see the road going there, and we had decided on the Phong Nha cave, so we kept driving. 

   
    
    
 
We ended up back on the same road we initially tried to get to Phong Nha cave, that the other travelers said ended in a dead end. But the road actually went on, it was just bumpy. Unfortunately it put us on the wrong side of the river, and since it was late in the day (nearly 4pm by then) we couldn’t get across with enough time to actually see the cave. But at least we found it and saw it from the outside! 

  
We decided to head back to Dong Hoi so we wouldn’t have to drive while it was cold and dark. We took the same road back (Ho Chi Mính Highway) and I had my camera ready this time for more action shots. 

   
   

Spreading more rice seeds.

   
    
 
When we got back to town, we returned the motorbike and went on a hunt for a good dinner. We asked for a recommendation from the hotel, and on our way there we saw a super busy restaurant that was selling one thing  – people were lining up for it and taking cabs there, so it must be good, right?  We had no idea what it was, so we walked by the recommended restaurant, which was completely empty, and decided to go back and try whatever everyone was lining up for.

  
It turned out to be Banh Loc. Apparently a specialty of Dong Hoi according to our hotel guy, and people from other parts of Vietnam come specifically to this restaurant to buy it and bring it home for their families or to sell. We saw people walking away with multiple huge bags filled with these. They are chewy tapioca dumplings with unshelled shrimp and another ingredient (we couldn’t tell what it was, Wikipedia says it may have been pork belly, and the hotel owner had a Vietnamese name for it, but really, we have no idea), steamed in banana leaves, and served with fish sauce with chills in it for dipping. They were weird and delicious and we were so glad that we gave this random busy place a chance; they sold out fairly soon after we ate, so I think we just got lucky – they start serving around 6pm until they sell out.. If we would have walked by at a different time of day we never would have tried it! 

Since the Banh Loc was more of an appetizer, and we hadn’t eaten much since second breakfast, we looked for something else, and found another adventurous place to try, that was marked on our map the hotel owner gave us. 

   
 It was sup luon – eel soup. And it was also really good! Very fresh tasting, and seemingly very different from the eel soup Thom had on our first day in Vietnam, with a thin broth, lots of fresh herbs, and fresh peppercorns! Never had those before either. 

This was probably one of our most favorite days in Vietnam; we really enjoyed being able to go out on our own and see the beautiful natural setting the area had to offer, on our own schedule, without anyone telling us what to do. And it would not have been possible without Thom’s amazing, patient, and very careful motorbike driving – thanks honey!! 

Next stop, Hoi An!